Wildlife photography is like fishing. I don’t do either really. Well, I guess photography, in general, is kind of like fishing at least in terms of those, “I’ll go out and see what I can find” sort of photo trips.
To me the payoff in wildlife photography just isn’t there. I can’t travel to any great wildlife photography area and stroll into the local tourist town and find a gallery of outstanding wildlife photographs taken by the local expert.
I’ll shoot some animal I see just for the fun of it. And I get excited seeing a bear or fox in the backyard but I don’t make a point of taking wildlife photographs.
Wildlife photography takes a lot of expensive equipment and a lot of hours in the field. The local experts spend weeks and months tracking down their “prey” and they cull the best shots from thousands of images taken.
I’ve seen the type in Yellowstone. They are all decked out with the photo vests, the latest camera body, and $25K bazooka lens mounted on a monopod. They have their bear tracking devices, anti-vibration shooting gloves, safari hats, bear spray, bird identification guides, rain poncho, beef jerky and Fuji water. Click-click-click-click-click…..goes their cameras as they shoot off hundreds of frames per second.
And then you see the photographs, often the most boring shots of random pronghorn deer, chipmucks or random bird eyeballs. Let’s face it. Most wildlife photos are dull and boring. The only reason the wildlife photographs in the galleries or in the page of magazines are exciting is that they were not taken by someone on a one-week vacation. No, they were culled from a lifetime of being out in nature. Only 1% or less of the shots taken are ever seen by the public.
As far as equipment goes, wildlife photography probably has the least payback as any photography endeavor. Expensive travel to wildlife areas and the most expensive cameras and lenses.
In the end I think it’s better to just observe the wildlife you come across or maybe hold up a cardboard mailing tube and make click, click sounds with your mouth.
The funny thing is when I tell people where I live, sometimes they say”, oh you must have lots of things to photograph around there”. Well, actually if you have an imagination and creativity, there are plenty of subjects to photograph no matter where you live.
